Public Health Sudbury & Districts said it has received confirmation from Public Health Ontario that an individual in its service area has tested positive for the COVID-19 UK variant (B.1.1.7).
This confirmation follows the report Jan. 25 of a possible case of a more highly transmissible strain of COVID-19. In addition, Public Health has been notified of three further possible cases in individuals in the area.
Two are individuals who had returned from international travel who were completing quarantine.
The other is in an individual who was self-isolating as a contact of a known case of a COVID-19 variant of concern (VOC) in another public health unit jurisdiction. Further confirmatory sequencing of these three additional samples is underway.
“The confirmation of the new COVID-19 variant of concern in our service area is a reminder that we are all vulnerable and we are not somehow specially protected,” said Dr. Penny Sutcliffe, Medical Officer of Health with Public Health Sudbury & Districts, in a press release.
“The virus spreads in the same way as regular COVID-19, but it is much more infectious. This can result in more cases, which means that more people could become seriously ill, while others may lose their lives.
“The key message to slow the spread as long as possible is that we must ramp up our prevention measures and truly limit or even avoid our contact with people outside of our own household.”
As there is evidence that these variants spread more quickly, intensified case and contact measures are being taken and include extending the isolation duration for the case, more readily identifying close contacts, and ensuring isolation of all household contacts of confirmed or probable cases as quickly as possible.
Like with all confirmed cases, Public Health was in contact with the individual with the confirmed COVID-19 UK variant to review their initial positive COVID-19 test result and investigate possible exposure settings as well as any close contacts.
There is no evidence to date of spread of the COVID-19 variants in our service area; however, COVID-19 variants are present in Ontario, and we are not immune to their spread in the north, said the health unit.
Early evidence shows that vaccines are anticipated to be effective against this new variant.
